[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Zen (YC S21) - Posture-correcting softwar...
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Launch HN: Zen (YC S21) - Posture-correcting software via webcam
We are Alex and Daniel, the founders of Zen
(https://www.yayzen.com). We make a desktop app that mirrors your
posture and gently alerts you when you slouch. It uses your webcam
to monitor your posture, without recording or storing any visuals.
Alex started coding when he was 11 years old and eventually
developed a severe case of "forward head posture" (a.k.a. nerd/text
neck), a postural deformity that's often caused by unhealthy habits
like slouching while coding. He created prototypes of Zen in his
college dorm room at the University of St. Andrews to help with his
posture. A couple of Alex's classmates saw him using the app
throughout lectures and asked if they could test it out. After more
feedback from his classmates he took advantage of an opportunity to
move to San Francisco, California to work more on the project. We
met at our co-living space and are still roommates today. I
(Daniel) went from playing football and doing splits at Yale
University (https://storage.thephapp.com/split%281%29.gif) to
terrible low back pain and carpal tunnel for over 8 hours a day
from working hunched over my computer at Adobe. Eventually I met
with an ergonomist at Adobe to get support. Ironically, Alex told
me about the project when I got home that day. I tried out his
prototype, loved it, and we came together to build Zen. Here's how
it works: The app takes video stream as input via your webcam
(without recording or storing anything) and utilizes a locally
stored computer vision model that analyzes the video to find and
output key posture points/indicators (joints, nose, ears, etc.).
These posture points are fed to a mathematical model that
constantly compares your current posture position to the original
baseline posture position that you set as your "healthy posture"
position when starting the app. In addition, the app applies
geometrical formulas to vectors formed by your current posture
position and your original baseline healthy posture position to
determine if you're slouching. Your current posture position is
displayed to you through a blue avatar named Zen that mirrors your
posture in real-time. Zen sits in your menu bar (tray menu) and
turns red when you slouch. Whenever you slouch for an extended
period of time, you get alerted through a visual notification
and/or an audio alert. The alert will go away when you move back to
your original baseline "healthy" position. The majority of our
users leave Zen on throughout their workday, but our initial
studies show that users see significant health benefits from using
the app for just 10 minutes a day during short "posture sessions".
Posture session reminders, slouch alerts, and other important
settings can be customized to ensure that they align with your work
style. The app is currently available for Mac and Windows. We're
offering a deal to the HN community (https://www.yayzen.com):
Annual - $23.99/year with 7-day free trial (normally $69.99/year)
Monthly - $3.99/month with 7-day free trial (normally
$12.99/month). You can see a demo video at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll5UB-bpbic. Our core business
model is focused on selling to companies that offer Zen to
employees as a benefit/perk (similar to Calm/Headspace). We would
love your feedback on the user experience and to hear more about
any workday health pain points you have! Happy to offer any
guidance on choosing the right chair, mouse, keyboard, and other
equipment. I'll be here all day, cheers!
Author : handheldmouse
Score : 40 points
Date : 2021-08-23 16:46 UTC (6 hours ago)
| OJFord wrote:
| For some reason I jumped to expecting this to morph the display
| in the direction of slouch, (such as tilting and shrinking into
| the lower-left corner a bit say) encouraging you to move opposite
| (sit up/lean right) to 'get a better view' as though the monitor
| were a window into a 3D world.
|
| Probably hard to implement, but have you considered anything like
| that? I imagine it'd be quite a nice subtle hint, that you'd
| subconsciously correct for even.
|
| Just seeing/reading this submission made me correct my posture
| though, thanks :/.
| handheldmouse wrote:
| That's a really cool idea and I'm curious to see if it can be
| implemented. However, a lot of people use Zen while working, so
| I can imagine the tilt can become quite annoying, especially if
| you're in deep work.
| skadamat wrote:
| Stuff like this is neat but always feels a bit like a short-term
| bandaid.
|
| I'd encourage folks here to check out programs like Egoscue,
| Alexander Technique, Gokhale method, etc for a more 'holistic'
| (quotes cuz its such a vague buzzword in health/wellness).
|
| I'm halfway thru Egoscue and it's been amazing for beginning to
| restore my mobility from when I was a kid, but people should do
| their own research.
| handheldmouse wrote:
| great point! We're working to tie in long term posture
| restoration programs. What great/different is that you'll
| actually be able to track your posture improvements over time
| via the app
| mvanveen wrote:
| Hi Alex and Daniel! This looks really cool and I believe I am in
| your set of target customers/potential early adopters.
|
| Personally, I'd much moreso prefer a self-hosted option such as a
| desktop application with strong guarantees about limits on cloud
| upload over anything cloud-based for this use case, specifically
| around concerns about how the webcam data could be used/abused. I
| don't see any immediate FAQ page or somewhere I could determine
| this information. Not seeing this information gives me some
| immediate pause in trying out your application or signing up.
|
| Similarly in addition to some discussion in your FAQs etc. around
| the limits of how the webcam imagery is used, I would personally
| love and feel more trust in the product if the FAQs could provide
| any data or transparency on how the training corpus takes into
| account issues of proper representation across ppl with different
| posture considerations (scoliosis comes to mind) as well as the
| overall representation of different demographics (race, age,
| gender) within that training set, and/or how the model training
| procedure defines or determines "correct" posture.
| handheldmouse wrote:
| Zen is a desktop app so I'm happy to see that we satisfy your
| preference.
|
| Those are great ideas. We'll be adjusting our website to make
| it more clear!
| mvanveen wrote:
| Yeah, thanks for being receptive to my feedback! FWIW I would
| not personally install your desktop app without further
| understanding of these other areas.
|
| However, if the adjustments you describe could sufficiently
| allay my concerns and make the proper guarantees then I would
| be interested in such a product potentially.
|
| As it stands I feel without said information there's just too
| much risk and uncertainty both as a private individual and
| employee to use this app.
| [deleted]
| jahewson wrote:
| I shared an office with a startup doing this in 2005, they still
| seem to be around.
|
| https://www.posture-minder.com
| handheldmouse wrote:
| That's really interesting! Thanks for sharing this!
| submeta wrote:
| What's the obsession with naming everything Zen. Zen-this, Zen-
| that. - And what does Zen have to do with commercial web
| services.
| [deleted]
| sureglymop wrote:
| Wow, that looks so helpful! Seeing as it is subscription based,
| do you have a student discount available?
| handheldmouse wrote:
| the student discount is coming soon! But we also have a
| generous discount available now for our launch.
| icey wrote:
| I've been using Zen for a couple of months now, and it's been
| really helpful in helping me stand up straight (I use a standing
| desk). Very unobtrusive and still works even though I'm on Zoom
| all day. The team is great too -- they've been super responsive
| any time I've run across a weird edge case (it's been a long time
| since it's happened, but when it did they had it sorted super
| quickly)
| handheldmouse wrote:
| We're delighted to see you've been enjoying Zen. Always more
| than happy to help!
| nickphx wrote:
| If the software and vision model are local what is the value
| given for the recurring fee? How is this better than a posture
| correcting garment or brace?
| handheldmouse wrote:
| To answer your first question, we constantly improve the
| computer and mathematical models to improve the accuracy of the
| 'posture session'. We also offer in-depth analytics about your
| posture tendencies and also provide and constantly update
| libraries of exercises and (ergonomic) educational videos.
| Moreover, we constantly develop new features that users ask
| for, that are meant to tackle other parts of your wellness
| while you work (i.e. walk breaks, exercise breaks etc.)
|
| Using a posture correcting garment or brace will actually make
| your muscles weaker, since they rely on external force to
| maintain your posture. This is very detrimental long-term and
| has a negative effect on your back health and overall health.
| They also don't help you build good posture habits, since you
| just have good posture while wearing a brace, but when you take
| it off, you're very likely to have bad posture again.
| nickphx wrote:
| Makes sense. Thanks for taking the time to respond, I
| appreciate it.
| Brakenshire wrote:
| Does this work for Linux?
| handheldmouse wrote:
| We don't support Linux yet, but we are working on this!
| fuzzybear3965 wrote:
| Get it working and I'll try it out!
| emptysongglass wrote:
| Glad I scrolled down on the comments feed. The landing page
| makes no mention of OS supported so I just assumed Linux was
| a go. Maybe you guys could make that clear.
| Grustaf wrote:
| > ...so I just assumed Linux was a go.
|
| ;)
| klyrs wrote:
| Sounds like you're using machine learning & computer vision. How
| much diversity is in your training set? I can see obesity, skin
| tone, and gender playing a role in this. Or, is it entirely
| trained on photos of the user? Even so... I see you're looking
| for users' ears. Can it cope with ears hidden by hair, or chunky
| earrings that change daily?
| lambic wrote:
| Looks like Windows only?
| handheldmouse wrote:
| We support both Windows and Mac - when you press any of the
| 'Start my free trial' buttons, the app, for your specific
| operating system, should start downloading. Let me know if you
| experience any issues.
| Gasp0de wrote:
| I'm on Linux and it downloaded the windows version :)
| diimdeep wrote:
| For anyone wondering it is Electron app, that packs some heavy
| web app assets(300mb + 150mb runtime), but still loads rest of
| web app from https://client.getposturehealth.co, and then it uses
| google pretrained posenet tensorflowjs model[0][1]. (loads it
| from https://storage.googleapis.com/tfjs-
| models/savedmodel/posene...).
|
| In perfect world one would made it offline, release it at fixed
| price and be done with it, in our imperfect world it is turned in
| infinite cash-cow that requires connectivity and bazillion
| metrics.
|
| [0] https://medium.com/tensorflow/real-time-human-pose-
| estimatio...
|
| [1] https://github.com/tensorflow/tfjs-
| models/blob/master/posene...
| handheldmouse wrote:
| So far we haven't had people report issues or complain about
| the app or its performance. We also test the app on laptops
| ranging from really low range and old laptops to the latest
| MacBook or Windows laptops and so far we haven't encountered
| any issues ourselves. Electron has been really useful since it
| allows us to build apps for different operating systems, hence
| we can support more users who are looking for a solution like
| ours.
|
| While we do use the 'posenet' library, this is around 25% of
| what goes on in the app during a 'posture session' - we need to
| actually label the multitude of positions that users can be in
| and we also need to calculate the degree to which users are in
| those positions. Moreover, we also offer walk breaks, exercise
| breaks and (ergonomic) educational videos that are really
| popular among our users.
|
| Thank you for your comment!
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(page generated 2021-08-23 23:02 UTC)